The Pearl Earring
by Mice
Summary: In 18th century Paris, Desire asks Despair to return a gift. (John Adams and Benjamin Franklin also appear.)


Summary: In 18th Century Paris, Desire asks Despair to return a gift.

**The Pearl Earring**

**By Mice**

**-1-**

In a ballroom cold with moonlight, Desire walks to Despair, tapping her on the shoulder.

"It's time. Hand them over."

"Hand what over?"

"The earrings. They were only a loaner, sister dear, and frankly, I look entirely too respectable to be caught in Paris."

"You have other earrings."

"But only one set of pearls, my dear girl."

"Do you need them?."

"The point isn't whether I need them or not but that they are mine, I lent them to you, and now I am asking that they be returned."

"Since when do you like pearls?"

"They were a gift for a very well intention peasant boy-or-something."

"For?"

"I never managed to quite give them up after I tried them on. Didn't even need a mirror."

"Pearls are the daisies of gems. Are pearls for peasants?"

"If I say yes, will you give them back?"

"No."

"Then no."

"Tell me what they are."

I heard a story from Poseidon once that a ship found a girl shipwrecked on a deserted island. And as they were men who had been out at sea for months, they fucked her to death. The sailors justified it that she was close to death when they found her and she wouldn't have lasted a trip back to the nearest port with a doctor. Anyway, after the sailors sobered up from sex, they realized that the girl wasn't a girl but a beached monk seal whose head was choked with seaweed which the lads mistook for long, feminine hair and promptly killed themselves."

"What does this have to do with pearl earrings?"

"I'm getting to that! Well, on top of not being aware that they were raping a seal the entire time, the sailors weren't aware of how not deserted the island wasn't. A crowd had been slowly gathering the entire time. Some of them went up to check out the soldiers bodies to see if they were alive. The way Poseidon tells it, seal fucking and rape - because sometimes the seal was consensual - was a major issue on this island and soon, there was a fight about the right to have sex with a seal or not."

"I think you said a triple negative."

"Unimportant, what is important, though, is that there was a young man who was on his way to meet a young girl-or-something. He went to one of the sailor's corpses and saw that he wore pearl earrings. The young man was on his way to meet a girl and decided to give them to her as a gift." Desire smiles. "Isn't that beautiful?"

"I don't get it."

"It's about desire."

"...how?"

"Because it meant that surrounded by violence, anger, lust, shame and death, the young man's thought in that moment was to get a gift for his lover."

"Then what happened?"

"What, you mean after he gave the earrings to his lover?"

"Yes."

"I don't know, they had terrifically athletic sex and married other people or something. What does this have to do with you not giving me my earrings?"

"Something must have happened."

"Why?"

"If he loved his lover that much, something must have happened."

"Not love, Despair, desire."

It's very small, but Desire sees Despair smile.

"Take them."

Desire pushes back the hair in front of Despair's ears and reveals a pair of perfect pearl posts with a dull aurora. "Did you slut it up with my earrings?"

Despair's smile deepens; Desire takes off one the posts and puts it on.

"I'll give you the other post if you tell me his name."

"Ben." Despair refuses the post. "I am getting my own."

Desire tosses the pearl post into the empty ballroom. "Suit yourself."

**-2-**

"You haven't been listening to a word I've said."

"Correct as always, John."

"We're no closer to securing an alliance with France than we were when the Mayflower docked at Plymouth Rock."

"Did you hear that straight from the horse's mouth or from the the other side?"

"Stop spending your nights being a Parisian It-Boy and start spending your days as the American Ambassador of France."

"John, they've made ceramics of me. I am pretty sure if I said "jolie mercis", they would rename the country from France to Franklin."

"Well, that's terrific! But eventually, we need to go back home. Not all of us need other women."

"Not everyone has Abigail's honey flavored nipples to nurture them when they return."

"Stop reading my private correspondence to my wife!"

"Stop? I should let Lou read one so he could see that you're a man of passion."

"Lou?"

"Only I get to call him that, you can call him 'your royal highness'."

"Get to work, Franklin. There's a war on. People are dying while you see whores in France."

John Adams exited the ballroom, leaving Ben Franklin alone to spy a pearl post on the ground. He placed it in his vest to give as a gift to Mdme. Mellancholie later that evening.


End file.
